The words and musings of a social worker

If You Claim To Be Worried About Obesity, This is Why You Should Support The Body Love Movement

I have kept my silence for a long time about the Body Love Movement, mostly biding my time for when I had something different to say. Keep in mind that I believe 100 percent in body love, all sizes, all shapes are good just as they are. And my shape…is that I am a curvy lady that has been sitting on the sidelines of this discussion. I believe that whether you are thin, athletic, curvy, bodacious, fat, plush…however you wish to identify yourself, you have a beautiful body.

However there is a group of people out there, who are concerned about our health as “overweight” individuals. As crazy as this sounds, a part of me understands the perspective that they are coming from, and I think some of them are trying to be genuinely helpful. They make comments like “If you tell fat people they are beautiful, it promotes obesity.” or “I am just concerned about their health. Obesity leads to so many health concerns” But here’s the problem.

Though a growing amount of bigger people are finding love with their bodies and would prefer to stay their big beautiful shape, there are also some of us who feel trapped in our bigger bodies. You have all these people who are self conscious. Millions of people. And for some of these people the reason is that they really want to lose weight, and they feel they eat an unhealthy amount of food. Those who don’t want to “support or promote obesity” are basing their viewpoint on the perception that if people love their bodies, they will just continue to eat more and more food until they consume mountains of daily food and never leave their house to exercise because happy content people don’t feel the need to exercise (obviously).

If you are one of these people unfortunately you do not have an understanding about how self esteem works. I challenge you to understand that when people feel good about their bodies, when they love their bodies, when they feel sexy and beautiful and happy…they will become who they are meant to be. It isn’t going to spiral them into a food loving non-exercising hermit.

IN FACT….telling someone that they aren’t beautiful, that they don’t meet your standards, that they can’t be happy, or enjoy themselves, or that no one will love them as they are….THAT is what will turn us into food devouring shut ins because lets face it, when something bad happens to me and I feel emotional my first thought is…I would really like some comfort food, and to hide for a million years. If you want to make ME obese, by all means, continue as you are in your denial of the importance of this societal change. When I see inspiring pictures of beautiful big women that look like me (or a variety of shapes), I want to go for a walk, I want to run and jump for joy, because I am so happy! When someone compliments me and tells me I am beautiful, my whole world changes. If I love myself, I want to be healthy (Whatever healthy means for you). Some people are healthy and they are larger, and we all need to be fine with that too. I am talking about people who don’t identify with being healthy because they have that low self esteem caused by the world’s perception of them.

So in conclusion, if you care about us, if you care about our health, and our mental well being, support the Body Love Movement, because your insults are not motivating, insults are insults and they are hurtful. Love is motivating, compliments and praise are motivating. Motivate us to be happy and healthy by showing the love (instead of the hate) to the Body Love Movement.

Note: On the same token, curvy girls, when we see our skinny sisters, love their bodies too, because in some circumstances they may have an eating disorder or emotional problems, similar to ours, and by saying comments like “I am a REAL woman” or “Ew eat some food” or “God she looks terrible”….are skinny shamming and should not be ok. Fight for the love of ALL bodies.

This lovely girl is me, and I am social worker, a domestic violence outreach worker, an advocate for all beautiful bodies, an artist,, and single...ahem...I mean....available to be your internet friend though the sharing of words and stories.